: Rudyard Kipling
: 29 Books
: Seltzer Books
: 9781455391417
: 1
: CHF 0.10
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 2201
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

This file includes 29 books: Actions and Reactions, American Notes, Barrack Room Ballads and Departmental Ditties, Captains Courageous, The Day's Work, A Diversity of Creatures, France at War, Indian Tales, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Kim, Letters of Travel, Life's Handicap Being Stories of Mine Own People, The Light that Failed, The Man Who Would Be King, Plain Tales from the Hills, Puck of Pook's Hill, Rewards and Fairies, Sea Warfare, The Second Jungle Book, Soldiers Three, Songs from Books, Stalky and Company, The Story of the Gadsby, Traffics and Discoveries, Under the Deodars, Verses, The Years Between, and Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer).According to Wikipedia: 'Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English author and poet. Born in Mumbai (then Bombay, British India), he is best known for his works The Jungle Book (1894) and Just So Stories (1902), his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), If- (1910); and his many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). He is regarded as a major 'innovator in the art of the short story'; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works speak to a versatile and luminous narrative gift. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.'

THE MOTHER HIVE


 

If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.

 

A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alighting-board."Excuse me," she began,"but it's my first honey-flight. Could you kindly tell me if this is my--"

 

"--own hive?" the Guard snapped."Yes! Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to you!  Next!"

 

"Shame!" cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and there was a scuffle and a hum.

 

The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged into a brood-frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who had been slanged by the Guard.

 

"What is the world like, Melissa?" said a companion."Cruel! I brought in a full load of first-class stuff, and the Guard told me to go and be foul-brooded!" She sat down in the cool draught across the combs.

 

"If you'd only heard," said the Wax-moth silkily,"the insolence of the Guard's tone when she cursed our sister. It aroused the Entire Community."